


I Am Happy

by MellytheHun



Series: Tumblr Sterek Prompts [23]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Confessions, Drabble, Love Confessions, M/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Pining, Romance, Soulmates, Temporary Character Death, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 05:57:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19144936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MellytheHun/pseuds/MellytheHun
Summary: somethingsohappily asked: Oooh okay! "Break Me"? But maybe one that doesn't completely kill me/ends in at least somewhat happy after all the angst?Leave a “Break Me” in my ask, and I will write an angsty drabble about our characters.AU: you only see color once you meet your soulmate, and you can lose the color in your vision when they die.





	I Am Happy

The grey spreads from the center of Stiles’ vision outward, and swallows his world in a horribly familiar way.

His stomach churns, his heart drops into his belly, and he sucks in a sharp breath, because through the panic, the sweat, and the all-encompassing terror, only one thing is instantly, horrifically true.

_Derek is gone._

 

* * *

 

 

Coming to terms with Derek being his soulmate wasn’t easy.

What is really more impressive is that they were both so emotionally inept that they were able to keep themselves from confronting the issue for two entire years.

Stiles loathes admitting to mistakes, because he rarely makes them (so he likes to tell himself), but he admits to himself that those two years were wasted time.

Wasted time in which he saw the clear blue sky shimmering in sunlight, the green of ivy twining around Mrs. Bennet’s front yard garden, the amber and whiskey of his own eyes in the mirror, as they absorbed the waiting world around him.

Wasted time that wasn’t really wasted. 

It was after the Nogitsune that Derek finally approached him, shoving Stiles into his chest like if he applied enough pressure to the embrace, Stiles would never be in danger again.

Stiles was breathing in Derek’s musk, masculine, and leather, and fresh like a sharp wind through the tall trees. He smelled wild, and close, and unattainable. He looked even more so. 

His hand had come to cup the back of Stiles’ head, and he had whispered, “can we talk about it?”

Stiles hadn’t been able to control the tears that fell from his eyes as he nodded into Derek’s chest. He hadn’t been sure at the time what those tears were for; relief, dread, embarrassment? He was never really positive.

They were cathartic, though.

They left him feeling new, and ripped open, willing, and able to take the parts of Derek that Derek hated, and make them apart of his own soul. So he could look into the deep cracks, and crevasses of Derek’s weary heart, and pour love into them.

Scott had major issues with the news at first, demanding, and wishing that it had to be a lie, because Stiles had never mentioned it.

The Sheriff was more warm, pulling Derek into a fatherly hug immediately, called him ‘son,’ and told Derek how glad he was that he finally found Stiles.

That they finally found each other.

Derek took Stiles to art, and history museums, and they spent a lot of evenings chasing sunsets on boardwalks, discussing the gradients and how much peace it brought them - how life had been lovely before, but it was a new kind of lovely now, with color.

Derek told Stiles once that, when he was a child, he swore he could see the red of his mother’s eyes. That, as an adult, he believes he never really saw the red, but could feel it.

Stiles held his hand.

Stiles volunteered hours at a local church, doing outdoor manual labor. A lot of planting for the lush garden they run in the back.

Stiles forced Derek to volunteer too, and the two of them grew dark eggplants, ruby tomatoes, and bright tiger lilies that Derek took more pride in than he was ever willing to admit.

Derek didn’t kiss Stiles, though, and Stiles was too nervous to make his own attempt.

Soul mates didn’t necessarily mean epic romance; platonic soul mates were quite normal.

Stiles knew that wasn’t the case for _him_ , though.

The longer he spent sharing breakfasts with Derek, where Derek would make big bowls of fresh, vermillion strawberries, and sprinkled snow white powdered sugar on top, the worse it got.

The longer he spent making bonfires with Derek by Derek’s dilapidated childhood home, watching the furious flames crackle, and growl like bengal tigers, the harder he fell.

The longer he spent helping Derek color coordinate his loft with matching, and sensible furniture, getting coinciding mugs, that closely matched their eye colors, the deeper Stiles sunk.

Derek dives headlong into danger, and Stiles panics from afar, they reunite, Stiles makes a dark joke about nearly losing the ‘light of his life,’ then Stiles takes the overbearing, brimming love starving in his heart, and folds it up like origami, hides it under a vase, or a painting on the wall to forget. 

Scott wonders often if Stiles, and Derek will put a name on the relationship they have, but Stiles has no good answer to offer.

He sometimes shoves the heart of his palms against his forehead, and wills the heat from behind his eyes to not pour out onto his cheeks.

The thought of Derek loving someone else is like jagged knives scratching against the plush underbelly of his soul.

He knows how he feels about Derek, and that’s enough to keep him quiet. 

So, it is only when the milky moonlight spilling over the blue-night-faded forest floor turns grey that Stiles realizes what he has done. 

It is only when the dark mahogany of the tree trunks turn grey, only when the sunny, and fiery colored leaves on the ground turn grey, only when the crimson blood seeping from Derek’s torso turns _grey_ that he realizes what he’s done.

He has let Derek die without knowing he was loved.

He rushes to Derek’s side once Scott has taken out the hunter whose sword still lies uselessly between Derek’s halved body, stumbling the entire way.

He wraps Derek’s torso into his arms, clumsy, and shaking, and so full of fear, so full of regret.

_I’m too late_ , Stiles brain supplies, _Derek is gone. I'm too fucking late. Derek is fucking gone, he's fucking **gone**..._

“Derek,” he whispers, petting back Derek’s ebony hair.

He doesn’t need to see it, he knows it. He knows the obsidian that Derek’s locks are, he knows the sea-after-a-storm kaleidoscope colors of Derek’s eyes, he doesn’t need to see them. He knows them, he remembers them. He will always.

“Derek, don’t be gone,” he pleads wetly, tears making tracks down the dirt on his face, “If you’re gone, come back. Come back.”

He curls over Derek’s slack torso, and weeps quietly, pleading over, and over,

“Come back. Come back. Come back.”

“Pull him together,” his mother instructs.

Stiles’ eyes open, and he swears he can see her.

He swears he can see the auburn of her hair, the porcelain of her mole-dotted skin, the twinkle of her chestnut eyes.

Unthinking, he does as she’s told him. 

He takes the sword out of the ground, and tosses it away. It’s too heavy to go far, and it glistens incriminatingly in his periphery.

He brings Derek’s halves together, and prays that Were healing will fix this.

His mother answers, “why must blessings only come in disguise?”

He can’t tell if his eyes are opened, or closed, can’t tell if he is awake, or asleep, if anything is real.

His heart lurches, and he says, “I don’t understand.”

“Derek is owed a miracle, or two for what he’s been through,” Claudia replies.

As quickly, and mysteriously as she came to Stiles, she is gone, though, and he can't get further answers.

He is left to cry over Derek, hands fluttering nervously over his torn up leather jacket, his shut eyes.

He wonders if he’s only hallucinated his mother, maybe he had listened too closely to how his father described the color of her eyes, maybe after seeing color for the first time, he built an image of what she may have looked like. Maybe she was never here with him at all. 

Maybe his mother was never there, maybe Derek is gone, maybe the colors were all a fanciful illusion, and Stiles is alone, and was always alone, and will always _be_ alone. 

Then there’s movement in his arms, and he is still too frightened to open his eyes.

The tears are still streaming, and he knows that when he opens them, he will know for certain whether or not Derek is gone from him forever ,or somehow within reach.

He swallows thickly, and mutters, hiccuping over tears that rush, and wrack him, “I-I’m — I love you. I — you brought color into my world, and that - that made life so much more full, so much more interesting, but that’s not what… it’s not that. I love you. Y-you made my life an adventure. You — you’re my light. With or without the color, you were always there, more than color — light. _My_ light. And, I didn’t tell you. I didn’t tell you that I love you, and I’m sorry, so c-come back, please. It’s more than - more than colorless without you. It’s dark, Derek.”

“I love you,” Derek rasps. 

Stiles’ eyes flutter open nervously, thinking maybe he’s having auditory hallucinations, but beyond his wetly clumped eyelashes, and watery vision, Derek is blinking up at him.

Derek’s tan skin, dark scruff, and kaleidoscope eyes. Derek’s black leather jacket, navy blue shirt torn, and spotted with maroon blood stains. The creamy moonlight coating Derek’s adoring face, the dark blue of the woods…

Stiles squeezes him too tightly, kisses Derek’s entire face, catches a tear escaping from Derek’s eye with a press of his lips.

His hands are rough around the frame of Derek’s face, and he pleads, “never — never again. Never again.”

Derek nods, making a promise he can’t keep, and knows he can’t keep.

Stiles wants to worship him for making it, though.

“You’re _my_ light, you know,” Derek tells him.

Stiles reluctantly smiles, and says, “you’re mine.”

It’s more than color. It’s more than warmth. 

Stiles’ soul walks into Derek’s, lights the way from inside himself, and says,

_Finally, I am home._

_There is nowhere I would rather be. I have been looking for you for all creation, and I am not mad the journey took so long, I am not weary from my fight to get here. I am happy. I am happy in my bones. I am happy in a way that outlives me, and is part of you._

_I am happy._


End file.
